My post Rationality is an illusion elicited a strong response from a business journalist.

The response(and subsequent responses) actually triggered significant further thoughts and clarifications. I thought my response to that is worthy of a separate post.

@Bassi Kumar:

“All the points you make are very genereic and can also be attributable to everyday people. Why just slag businesses?”

Exactly! I am trying to be business-focused …

Businesses and certain “experienced business people” like to pretend that rationality is the only way to make “real” business decisions.

Here are some irrational decisions I see many businesses make:

Penny-wise and pound foolish. Buying under-powered equipment, not having maintenance and backup plans, reacting to repeated and avoidable emergencies. Because thinking and planning is too hard.

The boss gets the fastest/best/most powerful computer to surf the web with, while the workers …

In his article Why business integrity is so important, Peter Morgan raises two important point about integrity.

Congruency

Having integrity means acting congruently with your values - regardless of what those values are. A business that has integrity does not necessarily mean a business that does “good”. Congruence is the key.

A low-fare airline that expects customers to do everything themselves with no hand-holding does have integrity; because they …

A senior official of the Vatican has sanctimoniously come up with a new list of seven deadly sins.

Otherworldly mission aside, the Catholic Church* is just another globalised, hierarchical corporation. The proclaimed sins are like the guiding principles of the operations of this corporation.

Like many corporations, this smacks of a marketing exercise – yet one more attempt to make the corporation appear more relevant, and generate some …

From AdPulp, by way of Stilgherrian:

The tall towers that house our corporations are the new palaces of our day, the places where real power resides, but those towers are full of paradoxes. Made of glass, you can’t see inside. They’re pillars of our democracy, but they are run as totalitarian states. Their names are reduced to a set of initials. Their leaders are …

It is rare to stumble upon a blog with thoughts that seems to fit so well with mine. This is what happened today when I discovered Emma McCreary’s Joy Ninja.

Reading through Emma’s posts, I suddenly realised why I have always been uncomfortable with conventional marketing and PR.

As I have often said on this blog, conventional business practice seems to assume there is only one “right” …

The Commonwealth Bank is (so far) saying they are “determined to be different”.

The National Australia Bank (NAB) is removing all transaction fees normally levied when customers use a non-NAB Automatic Teller Machine (ATM); effectivelyturning all ATMs into NAB ATMs. This is at a time when every other bank charge a “foreign”-ATM fee.

No prizes for guessing who is actually different.

Actions speak louder than words. Again.

Stilgherrian’s great post on calling Jason Calacanis a “prick” is a fun and worthwhile read on many fronts.

It is also a great real example of authenticity.

Jason Calacanis made some comments on a blog post which he later edited after receiving loads of negative responses.

Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work …

Guy Kawasaki’s post Power 3.0: Kinder, Gentler, and Better discusses the idea of “power” in business.

Conventional business practice tends to promote the idea that power = aggression, founded on the myth that everyone is out to get you, that the fittest win. This is the sort of power that is based on fear - fear of punishment and deprivation. This sort of “power” leads to sociopathy.

Guy …

Attracting customers require a personality with consistency.

It requires authenticity – being who you are. It uses conversations to connect with potential customers. You need to have a genuine desire to help, an absolute belief in the quality of the offering, and a constancy of purpose or vision.

The development of these foundation factors are counter-intuitively focused internally on the business, not on customers!

Attraction is about being …